In the wake of Pacifica Foundation’s announcement yesterday that it would be laying off staff and cancelling programming at WBAI 99.5 FM New York, we spend today’s episode discussing the future of community radio with Ernesto Aguilar from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. He emphasizes the importance of local news and access to information through community media, especially in the current social and political climate.

Ernesto Aguilar serves a diversity of rural, tribal, Latino, and urban media outlets as program director the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the nation’s oldest organization supporting hyperlocal community media. From 2005 to 2016, he was program director of KPFT, Pacifica Radio’s Houston station, and served as news department co-director at KPFT from 2003 to 2005. He wrote Pacifica’s Teaching Moment for Radio World following the 2017 court judgment against Pacifica and WBAI.